- Cookie 5 7 6 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screen Protector
- Cookie 5 7 6 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens
Last updated: October 2020
- About Verizon Media
- Verizon Media, previously known as Oath, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Verizon. We serve our consumers, partners, advertisers and talent through our portfolio of digital platforms, products and services offered under our AOL, Yahoo and other brands.
- We provide control tools to help you manage your experience with us. If you have an existing Yahoo or AOL account, you will need to agree to this Privacy Policy. If you have not yet agreed to this Privacy Policy, the legacy Yahoo Privacy Policy or legacy Oath Privacy Policy (for AOL) still apply to your account. For Verizon Media products or services that are accessed without signing in to an account, this Privacy Policy applies to those products and services as of May 25, 2018. If you are creating a new account, the terms below apply starting today.
- Except as set out elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, when we refer to ‘Verizon Media’, it means Oath, Inc., the US-established company that supplies the Services to you (and acts as data controller of the personal data Verizon Media collects when you use those Services).
- Our Privacy Pledge
- Our commitment is to put users first. We strive to be transparent about how we collect and use your information, to keep your information secure and to provide you meaningful choices.
- This Privacy Policy is meant to help you understand what information Verizon Media, its affiliates and its house of global brands (“Verizon Media,” “us,” “our” or “we”) collect, why we collect it and what we do with it. This policy applies to Verizon Media brands, websites, apps, advertising services, products, services or technologies (we’ll collectively refer to these as “Services”). Additional privacy practices for certain Services can be found in Details for Specific Products and Services.
- Your Controls
- We believe you should have tools to control your information. You can find controls to manage or review your account information, marketing preferences, location data, and search history at Privacy Controls. Some of our Services provide additional controls and privacy practices. (See, Details for Specific Products and Services)
- Information Collection and Use - General
- Certain categories of information collected by Verizon Media are necessary to use our Services, such as the information you must provide when registering for some Services. We may collect and combine information when you interact with Verizon Media Services information outlined below:
- Information You Provide to Us. We may collect the information that you provide to us, such as:
- When you create an account with an Verizon Media Service or brand. (Please note, when you use our Services, we may recognize you or your devices even if you are not signed in to our Services.) Verizon Media may use device IDs, cookies, and other signals, including information obtained from third parties, to associate accounts and/or devices with you.
- When you use our Services to communicate with others or post, upload or store content (such as comments, photos, voice inputs, videos, emails, messaging services and attachments).
- Verizon Media analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.
- When you otherwise use our Services, such as title queries, watch history, page views, search queries, view the content we make available or install any Verizon Media software such as plugins.
- When you sign up for paid Services, use Services that require your financial information or complete transactions with us or our business partners, we may collect your payment and billing information.
- Device Information. We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data. We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use.
- Location Information. We collect location information from a variety of sources. You can learn more about and manage your location permissions on our Locations page and by visiting the location settings tool on your devices.
- Information from Cookies and Other Technologies.
- We collect information when you access content, advertising, sites, interactive widgets, applications, and other products (both on and off of our Services) where Verizon Media data collection technologies (such as web beacons, development tools, cookies and other technologies, etc.) are present. These data collection technologies allow us to understand your activity on and off our Services and to collect and store information when you interact with Services we offer to partners.
- This information also includes the kind of content or ads served, viewed or clicked on; the frequency and duration of your activities; the sites or apps you used before accessing our Services and where you went next; whether you engaged with specific content or ads; and whether you went on to visit an advertiser's website, downloaded an advertiser’s app, purchased a product or service advertised, or took other actions.
- Information from Others. We collect information about you when we receive it from other users, third-parties, and affiliates, such as:
- When you connect your account to third-party services or sign in using a third-party partner (like Facebook or Twitter).
- From publicly-available sources.
- From advertisers about your experiences or interactions with their offerings.
- When we obtain information from third-parties or other companies, such as those that use our Services. This may include your activity on other sites and apps as well as information those third-parties provide to you or us.
- We may also receive information from Verizon and will honor the choices Verizon customers have made about the uses of this information when we receive and use this data.
- How We Use This Information
- We are able to deliver, personalize, and improve our Services by combining and using the information we have about you (including information we receive on and off our Services) to understand how you use and interact with our Services and the people or things you’re connected to and interested in. We also may use the information we have about you for the following purposes:
- Provide, maintain, improve, and develop relevant features, content, and Services.
- Analyze your content and other information (including emails, instant messages, posts photos, attachments, and other communications). You can review and control certain types of information tied to your Verizon Media account by using Privacy Controls.
- Fulfill your requests and when authorized by you.
- Help advertisers and publishers connect to offer relevant advertising in their apps and websites.
- Match and serve targeted advertising (across devices and both on and off of our Services) and provide targeted advertising based on your device activity, inferred interests and location information.
- Contact you with information about your account or with marketing messages, which you can also control.
- Associate your activity across our Services and your different devices as well as associate any accounts you may use across Verizon Media Services together. We may associate activity and accounts under a single user ID.
- Carry out or support promotions.
- Conduct research and support innovation.
- Create analytics and reports for external parties, including partners, publishers, advertisers, apps, third-parties and the public regarding the use of and trends within our Services and ads, including showing trends to partners regarding general preferences, the effectiveness of ads and information on user experiences. These analytics and reports may include aggregate or pseudonymized information.
- Provide location-based Services, advertising, search results, and other content consistent with your location settings.
- Combine information we have about you with information we obtain from business partners or other companies, such as your activities on other sites and apps.
- Detect and defend against fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful activity.
- We provide you with controls to manage your experience with us. For example, you can review or edit your account information, manage your marketing preferences, or opt out of targeted ads. If you opt out, you will continue to see ads, but they may not be as relevant or useful to you.
- If you are located in the European Union or European Economic Area or in the UK (EU/EEA/UK), please see Section 10 “Our Legal Bases for Processing Information” for more information that applies to your use of our Services.
- How We Share This Information
- Verizon Media shares information within its affiliated brands and companies and with Verizon. We also share information we have about you for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to provide Services that you have requested (including when you connect with third-party apps and widgets). We do not sell, license or share information that individually identifies our customers with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Verizon Media unless one of the following circumstances applies:
- With Your Consent. We will share information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Verizon Media when we have your consent.
- With Verizon. As part of Verizon, Verizon Media and its affiliates may, to the extent permitted by law and consistent with user controls, share information with Verizon and Verizon affiliates. This information will be used consistent with Verizon’s privacy policy.
- Within Verizon Media. Information may also be shared within Verizon Media, including with other Verizon Media Services and affiliates. Verizon Media affiliates may use the information in a manner consistent with their privacy policies.
- With Partners. We may share your information with nonaffiliated companies who are:
- Causality 1 2 5 download free. Trusted Partners. We provide user information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Verizon Media based on our directions and in compliance with appropriate confidentiality measures. Learn more.
- Advertising, Analytics and Business Partners (Limited to Non-Personally Identifiable Information). We may share aggregated or pseudonymous information (including demographic information) with partners, such as publishers, advertisers, measurement analytics, apps, or other companies. For example, we may tell an advertiser how its ads performed or report how many people installed an app after seeing a promotion. We do not share information that personally identifies you (personally identifiable information is information like name or email address) with these partners, such as publishers, advertisers, measurement analytics, apps, or other companies.
- When you use third-party apps, websites or other products integrated with our Services, they may collect information about your activities subject to their own terms and privacy policies.
- We allow other companies that show advertisements on our webpages or apps to collect information from your browsers or devices. Other companies' use of cookies and other data collection technologies are subject to their own privacy policies, not this one. Like many companies, we may allow cookie matching with select partners. But, these parties are not authorized to access Verizon Media cookies.
- For Legal and Other Purposes. We may access, preserve and disclose information to investigate, prevent, or take action in connection with: (i) legal process and legal requests; (ii) enforcement of the Terms; (iii) claims that any content violates the rights of third-parties; (iv) requests for customer service; (v) technical issues; (vi) protecting the rights, property or personal safety of Verizon Media, its users or the public; (vii) establishing or exercising our legal rights or defending against legal claims; or (viii) as otherwise required by law.
- This may include responding to lawful governmental requests. Learn more about how we evaluate and respond to these requests.
- New Ownership. If the ownership or control of all or part of Verizon, Verizon Media or a specific Services changes as a result of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, we may transfer your information to the new owner.
- Details for Specific Products and Services
- Additional privacy practices for certain Verizon Media Services are included here.
- Information Security and Data Retention
- Verizon Media has technical, administrative and physical safeguards in place to help protect against unauthorized access, use or disclosure of customer information we collect or store.
- To learn more about security, including the steps we have taken and steps you can take, please read Security at Verizon Media.
- Protecting Children’s Privacy
- Our Services are for a general audience. We do not knowingly collect, use, or share information that could reasonably be used to identify children under age 13 without prior parental consent or consistent with applicable law. With parental permission, a child under age 13 might have an Verizon Media Family Account. Visit Children's Privacy & Family Accounts to learn more about children’s privacy at Verizon Media.
- Our Legal Bases for Processing Information. We mainly rely on three separate bases to lawfully process your information. First, we need to process your information in certain ways to provide our services to you, in accordance with our Terms of Service. This processing is necessary to perform the contract between you and us. Second, where you have given us consent to use your information in certain ways, we will rely on your consent. Third, in certain cases, we may process your information where necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of third parties, where those legitimate interests are not overridden by your rights or interests. Occasionally, Verizon Media may rely on other legal bases to process your information, such as to protect a user’s vital interests (such as where there is a risk of imminent harm) or to comply with a legal obligation. Please see our Legal bases page for more information.
- Data Processing and Transfers
- When you use or interact with any of our Services, you consent to the data processing, sharing, transferring and uses of your information as outlined in this Privacy Policy. Regardless of the country where you reside, you authorize us to transfer, process, store and use your information in countries other than your own in accordance with this Privacy Policy and to provide you with Services. Some of these countries may not have the same data protection safeguards as the country where you reside.
- Verizon Media processes information related to individuals in the EU/EEA/UK and transfers that information from the EU/EEA/UK through various compliance mechanisms, including data processing agreements based on the European Commission’sA Standard Contractual Clauses. By using our Services, you consent to us transferring information about you to these countries. For more information, please visit our Data Transfer page.
- The United States and other non-EU/EEA/UK countries have different laws on data protection and rules in relation to government access to information. If you are based in the EU/EEA/UK, when your data is moved from your home country to a third country outside the EU/EEA/UK, some of these countries may not have the same data protection safeguards as your home country.
- Other Important Information
- This Privacy Policy Applies Only to Verizon Media. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of companies that Verizon Media does not own or control, or to people that Verizon Media does not employ or manage. In addition, some affiliated products may have different privacy policies and practices that are not subject to this Privacy Policy.
- Changes
- We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, so you should check it periodically. If we make changes that are material we will provide you with appropriate notice before such changes take effect.
- Questions & Suggestions
- If you have questions, suggestions, or wish to make a complaint, please complete a feedback form or you can contact us at:
Verizon Media
Customer Care - Privacy Policy Issues
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 - If you wish to contact our Data Protection Officer, you can do so by post to: Attn: Data Protection Officer, Verizon Media EMEA, 5-7 Point Square, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland. Isoftphone pro 4 2 4 x 6.
- Our Article 27 Representative can be contacted by email at [email protected], or by post at:
MHC GDPR Representative
Mason Hayes and Curran Professional Services Limited
South Bank House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland
Tel: +353 1 614 5000
- Recent Versions
- May 2018 - update to privacy notice;
- October 2019 - Oath to Verizon Media name change
- October 2020 - updates to data transfers and legal bases
Learn how to protect your AOL Mail account from unwanted spam. The safety and security of all our users is essential to AOL Mail. To protect your account, most suspected spam messages are automatically filtered, but if you're still getting overwhelmed with unwanted messages, there are additional options you can customize to protect your privacy. Deletes cookie files, history, cache, temp files and other personal tracks. This program was designed to rid your computer of electronic garbage and protect your online privacy.
Cookie 6 prevents third parties from hijacking your browsing experience. The sites you visit store “cookies” in your browser without your knowledge or consent. Some are helpful, but others are frustrating and invasive. Cookie can help. To get maximum privacy and web browsing convenience, you can block cookies by default and consequently white list certain sites to allow them to use cookies. Check website safety and enjoy safe browsing online with the No.1 website security extension and app, powered by a community of over 140 million users and available on desktop and mobile.
May 2011
Cookies
When you visit a website, not only are you offered information or services, but your computer may also be offered a “cookie.” A cookie is a small file that is passed from a website to an end user’s (your) computer, often without your knowledge or consent. The cookie is used to save information about the interaction between you and the site, such as login credentials, preferences, and any work in progress. The cookie file is automatically stored by your browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox) on the local hard drive, and it can later be retrieved by the website.
Cookie 5 7 6 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screen Protector
Cookies were invented in 1994 so that information could be saved between visits to a website. This lets you avoid logging in for every visit, and cookies are also used to keep track of preferences and works in progress (such as items in an online shopping cart). Today, just about all of the top websites use cookies for one purpose or another. Cookies are a very useful feature of the web and, without them, web sessions would have no history; you would have to enter your information over and over.
Third-Party Cookies
Initially, cookies were only shared between the website (the “first party” in the transaction) and the user (the “second party”). Soon after cookies were invented, however, their use was expanded to third parties—organizations not directly involved in the interaction—such as advertising companies displaying ads on certain websites.
When an advertisement is on a web page supplied by a first party, the advertising content and a cookie are passed from the advertising company (the third party) to the end user’s (your) computer. Later, when you revisit that same first-party website, or another site that uses the same advertising company, the third-party cookie can be retrieved by the advertising company. If the cookie contains a unique identifier, then information about your visits to different websites can be linked together.
Further, if any of the sites (such as social networking sites) collect personal information, this information might also be collected by the advertisers. In this way, advertising companies are able to track the websites that you visit and build up detailed personal profiles, which may then be used to target further advertising to you.
Third-party cookies raise privacy concerns because the transactions typically involve unknown third parties and are conducted without your knowledge or consent. Unless you pay attention to an often-confusing set of options in your browser software, the cookies are created and used invisibly, and the information that is gathered may be stored forever. In addition, the tracking and profiling done by advertising companies can be extensive; it is common for your computer to collect dozens of third-party tracking cookies.
Cookie 5 7 6 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens
Flash Cookies
Flash cookies (also called Local Shared Objects or LSOs) are created by Adobe’s popular Flash browser add-on for multimedia. Like traditional cookies, Flash cookies can be used to save state information, as well as preferences, between sessions. They are also used to track the websites that you visit. These cookies are normally not visible to you, the end user, and options to control or delete them are usually absent or very difficult to find. Flash cookies are frequently found on websites, and they are often used along with traditional web cookies. In fact, even if you delete web cookies, Flash cookies can be used to recreate them.
Flash cookies raise additional privacy concerns because they are more hidden than traditional web cookies, so you have to take extraordinary measures to remove them. Also, many privacy policies that describe the use of web cookies fail to mention Flash cookies, and procedures to opt out of web cookies often have no effect on Flash cookies.
Super Cookies
A third type of cookie, called “super cookies,” is also emerging. Super cookies use new storage locations built into browsers to save information about you. For example, the Internet Explorer browser has “userData” storage, while Firefox has “DOM” storage”. The emerging HTML 5 specifications also set aside web storage that can last either for a browser session or permanently (until deleted). These storage mechanisms are larger and more flexible than traditional cookies so more information can be stored. Like web cookies and Flash cookies, you, as a user, are often unaware that super cookies exist. You, as the user, are often not provided with tools to control the information that is stored.
Cookie-Less Tracking
A person’s browsing habits can also be tracked without cookies. One such method involves “web bugs”, which are small, invisible image files placed on a web page or hidden in an e-mail message. When you view the page or message, the image is downloaded from a server that can keep detailed logs. These logs record such information as your location, Internet address, the page or message you are reading, and the current date and time.
When people view web pages, their browsers can reveal a lot of information. The browsers can be queried to determine their detailed characteristics, including version number, window size, settings, add-ons, and customizations. The combination of information, often called “device fingerprinting,” can be quite specific to an individual machine. An experiment conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggests that this information may be unique to about one in one million people.
Web Privacy Tools
Unfortunately, protecting privacy while browsing the web is not an easy task. Web browsers provide some tools for storing and clearing cookies. However, the default is to store all cookies indefinitely and the privacy tools are often hard to find and use. Browsers can be set to block cookies, but many websites require that you, as a user, allow cookies to use the service. Even blocking third-party cookies can impair the experience of some services, so users are faced with the onerous task of allowing some cookies and not others. If you do configure your browser to delete stored cookies, this often only clears traditional cookies, without removing super cookies and Flash cookies.
Some browsers have recently implemented a “private browsing mode,” designed to protect privacy. In Firefox, for example, web cookies are deleted when a private browsing session is ended. Unfortunately, super cookies and Flash cookies are not always affected by these settings, so they are still stored during private browsing sessions. In order to clear all the different forms of cookies and web storage, you generally have to install and use special add-on applications. Some popular tools for Firefox, for example, are the BetterPrivacy, NoScript, and Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) plug-ins.
Conclusion
Cookies are powerful tools that give the web a memory, making for a better user experience. They do, however, also pose privacy concerns because they are often used without your knowledge or consent, and can be used to track your web habits and build detailed personal profiles about you.
To protect your privacy on the web, you need to learn about the cookie controls provided in your browser. You should also investigate some specialized tools that can control all cookie types. Unfortunately, however, even if you do make the effort to control cookies, there is little that you can currently do to protect against cookie-less tracking methods.
The OPC is studying this issue. We raised concerns about tracking practices in our Report on the 2010 Consultations on Online Tracking, Targeting, and Profiling, and Cloud Computing. We will continue to address our concerns with industry, as appropriate.
Additional Reading
Eckersley, P. (2010) Browser versions carry 10.5 bits of identifying information on average.
Krishnamurthy, B. and Wills, C.E (2010). On the leakage of personally identifiable information via online social networks. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 40(1), 112—117.
McKinley, K. (2008). Cleaning up after cookies.
Schoen, S. (2009). New cookie technologies: Harder to see and remove, widely used to track you.
Soltani, A., Canty, S., Mayo, Q., Thomas, L. and Hoofnagle, C. (2009). Flash cookies and privacy.
Wall Street Journal. (2010). What they know.